How To

Safe Calculator is a neat little utility that pretends to be the basic Window calculator when you launch it. In actuality, it’s a safe that can take a single file and encrypt it, disappearing it into the application itself. This tiny, free utility would be useful on the go or when sharing a public computer, when you need to write something down and then hide it.

It’s a good thing that it’s a simple program, because you may have trouble getting any help using it. We found the feedback form at the app’s native Web site, www.krilome.com, frequently unresponsive. For that matter, the site in its entirety went up and down during our testing period.

As for Safe Calculator itself, it’s easy as pie. It doesn’t even require installation. All you do is enter the password at any time and click MS, and “safe mode” appears, changing all the calculator buttons to ones that would be useful for an app like this. Then, click on + to store and = to confirm. After that, you can execute the file, bring it back from hiding, or delete it.

It’s difficult to figure out why developer Krilome decided to make the utility look like the Windows calculator when not in use, since when you’re in “safe mode,” the buttons change anyway and it doesn’t look anything like a calculator. Why not make a safe app that looks like a safe, instead? Do you really need that extra level of subterfuge?

At any rate, the fact that it doesn’t install means that it can run from anywhere, even an external hard drive…so if you’ve got one file with important information that is for your eyes only, you can make it vanish with Safe Calculator.

It’s hardly the first netbook battery comparison to appear in the Thunderdome that is the internet, but this latest thirteen-strong round-up from Australia’s NetbookReview is one of the more comprehensive to emerge as of late, with it only slightly compromised by a few netbooks that aren’t available in the site’s home country. Not surprisingly, the netbooks equipped with six-cell batteries came out well ahead of their less well off counterparts, with the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid leading the way with an impressive time of 6:56. That was obviously aided in no small part by the netbook’s dual SSD / hard drive setup, and by a less commonly used 5100mAh six-cell battery, as opposed to the 6600mAh version used in the second and third place Eee PCs (which each clocked in around the four-hour mark). Bringing up the rear were the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and Dell Mini 12, neither of which were able to eek out even two hours of use. As you might expect, however, all of the tests involved a worst-case scenario, so you can expect to get a good deal more juice from all of ’em if you’re not spending every waking hour watching WMV files.

eBay scammers have been exploiting unpatched weaknesses in the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers to deliver counterfeit pages that try to dupe people surfing the online auction house to bid on fraudulent listings.

The attacks managed to inject eBay pages with hostile code by exploiting issues long known to afflict Firefox and IE. While eBay has managed to block the exploit from working on its domains, other websites that accept user-generated content may still be vulnerable to the attacks, web security experts warn.

Firefox security volunteers say they are in the process of patching the vulnerability. For their part, Microsoft officials say the exploits aren’t the result of a vulnerability in IE but rather of websites that fail to properly protect against such attacks.

The evil genius behind the eBay scheme managed to pull off what amounts to an XSS, or cross-site scripting, attack that injected forbidden javascript elements stored on third-party websites. That allowed the eBay pages to contain outside email links and other unauthorized code while still evading toolbars designed to detect fraudulent listings.